Hello from the Philippines

Hello from the Philippines and my first p-day. I am writing you at 1 in the afternoon and it is 10 at night over in Utah on Sunday. The Philippines is amazing. The people are so nice and I can comunicate with most of them. Most of the people here speak English so it makes things a little easier but I am still trying to speak in Ilongo so I can be clear.

 My companion is Elder Bermudez. He is 5'2" and is a native from the Philippines in Isabela, Luzon. He is a great person. He likes to laugh so it makes it easy for me to participate in the lessons because the people here like to observe others. The language is coming but I don't know that much. It is hard because they talk fast here. A lot of our time goes into teaching less active people right now but we are working with some people so that they become investigators. People here have to go to church for 4 weeks in a row in order to be baptized so it makes it hard to baptize them because of work and other things.

 Right now I am assigned to Manapla. It covers a few cities so I can't tell you all of them but we work hard. Manapla is the top of the Negros island. We are right next to the ocean.

It gets very hot here. You will be fine one moment but the next you will be sweating bullets, literally. We live Villa Angela area but they don't have addresses here. We will be there until March and then we will move because some members are building us a place right now.

 We have a great ward mission leader that helps us and he is always around to go with us so we work very closely with the members.

I love you. I hope everything continues to go well.

Elder Nielsen